Jarmila Fusová

“From uphill that was along the road a young man appeared all of a sudden riding a bike, I know he had a white shirt with his hand up straight shouting: ‚The Russians are coming from Louny.‘ So everyone was as if they heard a shot, off they ran. Just daddy, who (was – editor´s note) a soldier in the WW1 commented: ‚Let’s go and see them, kids!‘ So we were around and took off to Branka and also Mrs. Lavičková went with her small daughter Milenka, about two year old, carrying her in her arms. And so we walked past the road and in the gardens and uphill to Branka – it was a small hill. So we went up there and saw nothing, just Germans coming from Pšány and Čenčice. That was the Scherner army going to Žatec, but oh so many Germans, you could not imagine, it was something terrible. And uphill in Topolák we saw a smoke and daddy said: ‚Look, there they come.‘ So we looked and saw a tank coming uphill very slowly and a whole line of the Russian soldiers. And they got to the crossing and the German shot the tank first, it tank rolled down to the lode amongst two poplars and stayed there and another turned round and began shooting and shot the whole like in pieces. And now there was the gardener, Mr. Markuci and near him the canister with gasoline stood it was like the kitchen, three large canisters imagine burning for three days, how the Russians went. Well such terror it was. So I saw the war. Well and then everything calmed down, the Germans stopped coming, probably took another road around us. And I was quite a curious person so I had to go and have a look what it was like. I mean you would not imagine, a man alive with his intestines outside his body, all the crying it was so terrible and unforgettable.”

“I remember, when they were moving from Sudetenland, we drove by car to the field and on the state road to Louny, up to Topolák and from there it was a line of people, who had their little carriages with only a bed cover and a child sitting on top of it and another child walking next to it, and of them were moving out. I remember that clearly. I say: you cannot forget that, I saw it so closely, how they were moving. And each village took some of them, whoever had a little space, they were spread in the villages around Louny.”